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In Review: Sharon van Etten- Remind Me Tomorrow

American singer and songwriter Sharon van Etten released
her fifth studio album 'Remind me Tomorrow' on Jagjaguwar in mid-January. This
album, in a way, also marks the ten year anniversary since her eponymous
debut in 2008 and comes as a follow up to her 2014 release ‘Are We There'. There is an evident gap of four years which Sharon has been using to explore new grounds with acting and
she also gave birth to her first child. New events in life certainly have had an
impact on this new content which Sharon presented in ‘Remind me Tomorrow’.

The above mentioned album was produced by John Congleton
which already successfully worked with Dirty Projectors and St Vincent. It
clocks at 41 minutes and includes ten tracks out of which only one goes beyond 5
minutes and seems prettymuch like a straight
forward release. As we did not experience much of Sharon’s previous work, we will
treat this as standalone album review. Overall the album has a nice atmosphere and
feel, and it is very evident that synth arrangements are taking the leads on
this record. All in all, going track by track, there is also a lot of small instrumentation
involved, but very measured which keeps up the listeners attention throughout the record. The decision
with the two opening tracks in not something I am very happy about, neither lyrically
nor production wise, but somehow this is the path up, to the first highlight of
the album, the song “Memorial Day” which together with “Jupiter 4” and “Hands”
mark this record's highlights. The blanket of synth ambiance seems to be spread
over the most of the album's songs and the diversity and quality comes with the layered
elements which bring the right amount of decoration to the sound. Organic elements meet with
the synthetic textures and manage to spice it up with glitch
drums, quirky synths and drone sounds. At the same time Sharon sticks to her
very distinct style and her voice modulates perfectly and remains in the center of things.

Overall the album has a nice narrative and although there are weaker tracks it does not threat the dynamics of the
whole album nor does it bore the listener. There do not seem to be exceptional lyrical highlights, yet the
Sharon mangers to convey the emotion on the listeners. Having also listened
the previous album while I am writing this review, only confirms that that
Sharon goes beyond her scope and that this is a new cosmic artwork.